Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Deuteronomy 14:4
These [are] the beasts which ye shall eat: the ox, the sheep, and the goat,
4. These are the beasts which ye shall eat ] Lev 11:2-23 has no list of clean beasts such as here follows.
ox, sheep, goat ] For the sacramental nature of the slaying and eating of domestic animals see on Deu 12:20-28. In ancient times the enjoyment of flesh by ordinary people was rare; that of the domestic animals was limited to special occasions such as the arrival of a guest, or a family festival, but kings and the rich ate it every day, and successful raids were celebrated by feasting upon the animal spoil (e.g. Jdg 6:19, 1Sa 14:32; 1Sa 16:20 ; 1Sa 25:18; 1Sa 28:24, 2Sa 12:4 , 1Ki 4:23, Amo 6:4). The flesh was, as still in Syria and Arabia, usually of sheep and goats; Arabs regard the former as the more honourable for a guest. Bullocks and calves were slain much more seldom, except in great houses. So it is still with the fellain; while in Arabia, where pasture is scarce and the oxen are for the most part meagre and stunted, ox flesh is very rarely eaten; and its place is taken by that of the camel (see below). Ancient Arab physicians held beef to be poisonous; in parts of S. Arabia it was eaten only by the very poor; to set it even before a servant was regarded as an insult (Georg Jacob, Altarabisches Beduinenleben, 94).
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Deu 14:4-20
The beasts which ye shall eat.
Gods provision for mans table
I. Provision, Divine in its source. Israel could not have procured it and would not have known without Divine teaching what was good for them. Recognise that power which can furnish a table in the wilderness (Psa 78:19).
II. Provision good in quality. Nothing unclean, nothing unwholesome, was specified. Not anything was to be eaten apt to stimulate sensual passions, or to foster coarse tastes and degrading habits.
III. Provisions abundant in quality. There was no stint in beasts, birds, or fish. The articles of food were nutritious and abundant. Gods legislation for our lower reminds us of His care for our higher nature. There is no lack anywhere. Let us remember our Benefactor, for we cannot put a morsel of food into our mouths till God puts it into our hands–discern kindness not only in prescribing, but in prohibiting, and be grateful to the living God who giveth us richly all things to enjoy (1Ti 6:17). For a man may be blessed with riches, wealth, and honour; want nothing; yet God giveth him not power to eat thereof (Ecc 6:2). (Matthew Henry, D. D.)
Food provided
In this provision of food we see–
1. A mark of Divine condescension. If kings legislated for the diet of their people, is it beneath the King of Israel to appoint the food for His chosen people? All that we know of God, says Dr. Cumming, in creation, in providence, in redemption, leads us to see that He takes as much care of what the world calls, in its ignorance, little things, as He does of what the world thinks, in equal ignorance, great and weighty things.
2. A proof of Divine benevolence. It is kind to provide at all. But what thought indicated, in the choice of animals which multiplied slowly, which were not difficult to obtain, found without leaving the camp, and without danger and contact with heathens around them! All this intended to reclaim and bless. (Matthew Henry, D. D.)
Every creeping thing that flieth is unclean.
Gilded sin
1. There is a natural disgust in everyone to the idea of eating, or even handling, a creeping worm or caterpillar. However difficult this feeling may be to analyse, God has given it to the race for some purpose. All things that are abhorrent to our human instincts–things which we call repulsive–are so many indications of the great truth that we are to make distinctions between clean and unclean, good and evil, right and wrong.
2. Now God saw fit to incorporate this natural instinct of man, which He had implanted, in the law for His people. He forbade their eating these repulsive, crawling things. We know how the natural instinct is often overcome by wilful habits, and we find degraded men taking pleasure in those articles of food which the human palate originally and instinctively rejects. Hence the necessity of a law behind the instinct, when God would teach by it His great spiritual lesson.
3. He would teach us that we may in conscience shrink from gross sins, and yet gradually blunt conscience and indulge in sins we formerly abhorred; and that, therefore, a Divine law must be made the norm of our lives, and not simply the protests of natural conscience.
4. We desire to call your attention to a different class of dalliers with sin–not the gross and vulgar, but the refined and elegant. Their refinement is such that gross forms of sin repel them–not because they are sin, but because they are gross. The nauseous caterpillar has dressed itself up as a beautiful butterfly, and in this form they sport with the creature. But what does Gods law say? Every creeping thing that flieth is unclean unto you. The wings and pretty colours have not altered the nature of the vermin. The same uncleanness is there as before. How many there are who would shrink with dismay from overt sensuality, and yet will, in the privacy of the chamber, gloat over a licentious novel! It is the very same crawling thing–only now it has pretty wings.
5. One of the most successful cloaks for sin at the present day is so-called art. Art is something very lovely and refined. It is a grand thing for the young to know all about art. It shows high breeding to admire and criticise art. Now, there is a grain of wheat and a bushel of chaff in all this talk. To one genuine artist who only looks to the art, there are a thousand hypocrites, who know nothing about art, and only adopt the language of art to hide their sinful tendencies. In the name of art they go to see the public performances of a loose woman and watch the movements of a play that makes light of the marriage relation. In the name of art they fill their parlours with nudities, in voluptuous form and colour, by which the youth of the families are stimulated to sensuality and debauchery; and, in the name of art, the young artist sits before his nude model for her destruction and his.
6. In every way luxury can devise, passions are inflamed, and then modesty is called prudery. Indecent dressing, lascivious dances, immoral innuendo in conversation, form part of this refined system of destroying the soul, in which Christians engage because they must he in the fashion. The creeping thing down in a dance house in Water Street they would exclaim against; but the winged creeping thing that flies in the uptown parlour they delight in; yet it is the same venomous beast.
7. Is it right for those who are washed in the blood of Christ, and who seek the sanctifying influences of the Holy Spirit, to enter wilfully into a social life where books and pictures and statuary and entertainments are most unblushingly promotive of sensuality and vicious thought? Is it right to become accustomed to such gilded filth, so that we lose our Christian delicacy and reserve, and at last make impurity a fashionable virtue? Satan is cunning in his temptations. He does not come to us in a vulgar form and so disgust us. He puts the many-coloured wings on the slimy crawler, and so fascinates us into his service. Beware! (H. Crosby, D. D.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 4. These are the beasts which ye shall eat] On Le 11:1-47, I have entered into considerable detail relative to the clean and unclean animals there mentioned. For the general subject, the reader is referred to the notes on that chapter; but as there are particulars mentioned here which Moses does not introduce in Leviticus, it will be necessary to consider them in this place.
The ox] shor: BOS, fifth order Pecora, of the genus MAMMALIA, species 41. This term includes all clean animals of the beeve kind; not only the ox properly so called, but also the bull, the cow, heifer, and calf.
The sheep] seh: OVIS, fifth order Pecora, of the genus MAMMALIA, species 40; including the ram, the wether, the ewe, and the lamb.
The goat] az: CAPRA, fifth order Pecora, of the genus MAMMALIA, species 39; including the he-goat, she-goat, and kid. The words in the text, seh chesabim, signify the lamb or young of sheep; and seh izzim, the young or kid of goats: but this is a Hebrew idiom which signifies every creature of the genus, as ben enosh and ben adam, son of man, signify any human being. See Ps 144:3; Job 25:6.
The flesh of these animals is universally allowed to be the most wholesome and nutritive. They live on the very best vegetables; and having several stomachs, their food is well concocted, and the chyle formed from it the most pure because the best elaborated, as it is well refined before it enters into the blood. On ruminating or chewing the cud, See Clarke on Le 11:3.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
Of which see Le 11. The small differences between some of their names here and there are not proper for this work. The learned reader may find them cleared in my Latin Synopsis. For others, they may well enough want the knowledge of them, both because these are the smaller matters of the law, and because this distinction of clean and unclean beasts is now out of date.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
These are the beasts which they shall eat,…. That is, which they might lawfully eat of, which were allowed for their food; for they were not obliged to eat of them if they did not choose it:
the ox, the sheep, and the goat; which were creatures used in sacrifice, and the only ones, yet nevertheless they might be used for food if chosen.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
(4) These are the beasts which ye shall eat.The following paragraph to the end of Deu. 14:8 answers to Lev. 11:2-8, with this difference. The beasts that are to be eaten are specified in Deuteronomy. The exceptions are given in Leviticus.
The ox, the sheep, and the goat.These being sacrificial animals, naturally stand first. The sheep and the goat are literally, a young one of the sheep or of the goats. This may serve to illustrate Exo. 12:5, Ye shall take it out from the sheep, or from the goats. According to the letter of the Law in Exodus, the Passover victim might be either lamb or kid. The word sh, used there and in Gen. 22:7-8, is not distinctive of the species. This word is rendered lamb in several places in our English Version.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
4. Ox, sheep, goat These seem to be named first as the ordinary domestic animals that were considered clean. Then comes the enumeration of the wild animals that could be eaten.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Deu 14:4
‘ These are the beasts which you (ye) may eat: the ox, the sheep, and the goat,’
These are the animals which can be used for offerings and sacrifices. They are all domestic animals. They belong to the people (in contrast with wild animals which belong to Yahweh) and can be offered to God as an offering. Thus they are clearly right to eat.
Deu 14:5
‘ The hart, and the gazelle, and the roebuck, and the wild goat, and the ibex, and the antelope, and the chamois.’
These are animals which can be hunted for game and eaten as ‘clean’, but cannot be offered as offerings and sacrifices, for as wild beasts they already belong to Yahweh (Psa 50:10).
Deu 14:6
‘ And every beast that parts the hoof, and has the hoof cloven in two, and chews the cud, among the beasts, that may you (ye) eat.’
The principle on which they are chosen is declared. They have the hoof cloven in two and ‘chew the cud’. How the latter was technically conceived we do not know, but the principle was that they ate slowly and deliberately, and took good time over eating their food, all of which was of a kind suitable for that purpose. (Thus it does not necessarily mean literally ‘chewing the cud’ by swallowing and regurgitating). The point is that they ate ‘proper food’. The make up of their feet meant that they tended to remain and eat on clean land, land good for growing crops and herbage, and not to wander into ‘unclean’ areas. The way they ate made them careful in what they ate. (The goat can be an exception to this, but probably not as herded by the Israelites).
Deu 14:7
‘ Nevertheless these you shall not eat, of them that chew the cud, or of those who have the hoof cloven, the camel, and the hare, and the rock badger, because they chew the cud but do not part the hoof, they are unclean to you.’
Other animals which are seen as edible to other nations, were not to be seen as so to Israel. These animals may chew slowly and obviously, or they may have cloven feet, but they do not have both. Thus the camel’s feet enable it to wander in desert regions, where death is prevalent. Such regions were looked on with foreboding in Israel. The hare and the rock badger, while they chew slowly and deliberately, go into places which are ‘unclean’ because their feet enable them to scrabble and encourage them to do so. They are thus ‘unclean’.
Deu 14:8
‘ And the swine, because he parts the hoof but does not chew the cud, he is unclean to you. Of their flesh you shall not eat, and their carcasses you shall not touch.’
The pig or swine is a further example. In this case it parts the hoof, but it does not chew slowly and deliberately. It nuzzles in the dirt and eats what is unsavoury. That a sow that was washed returned to its wallowing in the mire became a proverb, because that was how through the ages it was seen (2Pe 2:22). It was therefore not seen as suitable food for Yahweh’s people.
That these distinctions would preserve Israel from many, although not all, diseases is unquestionable. But the overt point is not so much avoidance of disease as the fact of unsuitability, although the one merges into the other. Those that wandered in doubtful environments or nuzzled in the dust, both connected with death, must not be eaten. They did not keep to their proper sphere, whereas His people are constantly required to keep to their proper sphere within the covenant. In all cases the behaviour of unclean creatures was the opposite of what Yahweh was. And His people were to model their lives on what was wholesome. See commentary on Leviticus for further detailed treatment.
Deu 14:9-10
‘ These you may eat of all that are in the waters: whatever has fins and scales you may eat, and whatever does not have fins and scales you shall not eat; it is unclean to you.’
The distinction with sea and river creatures is again clear and specific. All fish with fins and scales, of which they were aware, swam in the rivers but did not delve into the mud. These were thus ‘clean’. Other creatures did delve in the mud, and were therefore unclean. Again this was not a scientific survey but a fact of observation. This excluded some that were certainly edible, but included shellfish which under certain circumstances could cause unpleasant diseases. But what was most important as seen in this context was their contamination by their contact with dirt and mud.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
These. There are eleven animals named in Deuteronomy which are not included in Leviticus and Numbers, More names known after forty years from Egypt. Compare Lev 11.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Lev 11:2-8, 1Ki 4:23
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
14:4 {b} These [are] the beasts which ye shall eat: the ox, the sheep, and the goat,
(b) This ceremonial Law instructed the Jews to seek a spiritual pureness, even in their meat and drink.